Humanity, man. We’ve had a good run, and have come up with some really neat stuff, but I think we could all use a bit of a breather. Nothing permanent, just a short break where we stop for a moment and maybe reconsider our priorities.

I’m not saying all of our priorities are bad. Some of them are quite good! But it’s hard to escape the feeling that somewhere, at some point, things started going terribly, terribly wrong.

Was it the election? In part, perhaps. The causes aren’t what matters now. What matters now is that we all stop (if only for a second!) and take a long, deep breath. You can try taking one right now. Go ahead, test it out, I’ll wait.

That felt nice, didn’t it? Ideally, we can all sit down and agree to something a bit more substantial. Ideally, we can find a planet-sized sanatorium with room for seven billion patients, check ourselves in for a month or two, play some ping pong, drink some water, and think—really think—about what it is we’re doing.

I don’t expect enlightenment to come easy. If the last 300,000 years are any indication, it will be quite hard to come by indeed. But I think we can all agree that taking a little break where everyone just cools their jets for one goddamn second will leave us all feeling better off.

Years ago, a colleague of mine proclaimed that it was time to panic. As cathartic as a full-scale freak out is, however, it can only take us so far. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is the time for calm. For reflection. For cutting it out with all this crazy-ass Kafka-meets-Cronenberg shit and just sitting and breathing like a human being.

Go ahead, I’ll wait. And when you’re back, we can try taking it from the top. This time without all the murder-bots, and smart dongs, and random cucumber attacks that make me feel like someone’s been dosing my coffee with nano-mescaline brain worms for the last two years.